Waking to continued rain is always disheartening. It sets the tone for the day, and so it is today. When there’s a brief pause in the continuous stream of water from above, I pack my thing and visit ‘one of Scotlands best beaches’, as the camp owner called it.
Perhaps the stormy day is not the best to judge. The sand seems nice, although it is almost as cold as ice.
I start off along the coastal road with its many hills and soon turn onto the main road to Fort William. Glenfinnan with its famous 120 year old concrete railroad viaduct is my only stop, as I trudge on through a rainy day only seldomly punctuated by short dry spells. The viaduct is impressive from a distance and slightly depressing in its brutalist ugliness when standing right under it.
That’s not a prop from Snowpiercer, this is a real old train snowplow
I see the Jacobite steam train twice that day, once before Glenfinnan and once in Fort William. From a distance, its long white smoke plume looks marvellous, but closer up you notice the underlying dark smoke from the coal powered engine.
In Fort William, I pass an old wooden fishing boat rotting on the shore, then head into Glen Nevis to my campsite for the night.
